As the demand from users for bandwidth has rapidly increased, optical transmission systems, where subscriber traffic is transmitted using optical networks, have been installed to serve this demand. These networks are typically referred to as fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), fiber-to-the-building (FTTB), fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP), or fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). Each such network provides access from a central office (CO) to a building, or a home, via, e.g., optical fibers installed near or up to the subscribers' locations.
Examples of optical transmission systems include passive optical networks (PONs), such as Gigabit PON (GPON) and Ethernet PON (EPON), and Active Ethernet, An Active Ethernet is a type of FTTP network that uses optical Ethernet switches to distribute the signal, thus incorporating the customers' premises and the central office into a switched Ethernet network.
An exemplary diagram of a PON 100 is schematically shown in FIG. 1. The PON 100 includes optical network units (ONUs) 120-1 and 120-2 coupled to an optical line terminal (OLT) 130 via optical fibers and one or more passive optical splitters/combiners 140. Traffic data transmission may be achieved by using two optical wavelengths, one for the downstream direction and another for the upstream direction. Downstream transmissions from the OLT 130 are broadcast to all ONUs 120. Each ONU 120 filters its respective data according to, for example, pre-assigned labels. ONUs 120 transmit respective data upstream to OLT 130 during different time slots allocated by OLT 130 for each ONU 120.
The GPON, EPON, and Active Ethernet systems have been adopted by many telecommunication companies in order to deliver high-speed data services (e.g., up to 10 Gbit/s) to their subscribers. These services can include a bundle of TV broadcasting (including high definition and ultra-high definition television channels), Internet access (including streaming video and audio), and telephone services to name a few.
To provide these services, an ONU 120 is typically connected to a residential gateway installed at the premises of a subscriber. As illustrated in FIG. 2, an example residential gateway 200 can be connected to the ONU 120 via a wide area network (WAN) port 202 or can be integrated (not shown) within the residential gateway 200 in other instances. The residential gateway 200 is further connected to end user devices 206-1 through 206-n (e.g., computers, set-top boxes, smart phones, cameras, speakers, etc.) via local area network (LAN) ports 204-1 through 204-n and/or wireless LAN connections (not shown).
In general, the residential gateway 200 functions as a router to connect the ONU 120 to the end user devices 206-1 through 206-n. This allows the end user devices 206-1 through 206-n to access the Internet and other data services via the ONU 120. The residential gateway 200 further provides other functionalities, such as switching, allowing the end user devices 206-1 through 206-n to communicate with each other.
Network units, such as residential gateway 200, are equipped with network processors to provide routing and switching functionalities as well as others by processing packets received via its ports. However, because residential gateways are required to support advanced applications and to process high volumes of traffic provided by todays access networks at (or near) wireline speeds (e.g., to support streaming video, streaming audio, and real-time gaming applications, to name a few), the currently available network processors used by residential gateways have become bottlenecks that limit the performance of local area networks within subscriber premises.
The embodiments of the present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.